After the game is before the game – the Fürth ultra scene took this motto very literally last Saturday. The referee had barely blown the 2-2 win against Holstein Kiel when the spokesman for the ultra group “Horidos” grabbed the megaphone and swore the players gathered in front of the fence along with the 3,000 standing room fans to the upcoming derby at 1. FC Nürnberg. Not every word he said was quotable. They could be paraphrased like this: “Since it has to be, this one time a year we will make the short trip to the neighboring town that we don’t love so much, dress ourselves in white textiles and with three points back to the beautiful driving in Fuerth.” If you interpret the applause correctly, the plan on Saturday was generally approved. After all, some had already intoned “We want to win the derby” when the others were still trying to turn the one point against Kiel into three.
A banner was already shown in the first half, which took up the demand that the club should be called “Spielvereinigung Fürth” again in the future and remove the addition “Greuther” from the name. The fact that this could actually happen is due to a vote at the annual general meeting that took place on June 27th. In the coming year it could ensure that the club, which was called Spielvereinigung Fürth from 1903 to 1996 and won the three German championships under this name (1914, 1923, 1926), could soon be called that again. Since 1996, the “Cloverleaf” has borne the name of Spielvereinigung Greuther Fürth, as a reference to the small town of Vestenbergsgreuth, 50 kilometers from Fürth, where long-standing President Helmut Hack lived. A merger with the local football club, which he directed, saved the traditional club from bankruptcy. The official club crest of the Fürth still adorns an ice skate, which also appears in the crest of TSV Vestenbergsgreuth. That would also be up for grabs, and for years now only the cloverleaf has appeared on the players’ jerseys.
Since 1996 – and thus since the time when Fürth drew national attention again – different perceptions have developed nationwide. While in Cologne or Magdeburg the “Greuthers” have long since been innocently talked about when talking about football, in the city in particular 90-year-old “Färdder” and Ultras who weren’t born in 1996 suffer equally from the addition that the not only find them phonetically so unwieldy that they will never get used to it. On the other hand, players who are new to Fürth also speak quite freely in their first interviews about how comfortable they felt at “Greuther Fürth”. For this reason, too, the association is skeptical about a re-naming, according to reports, all association bodies have spoken out against it. In the past 25 years, a new tradition has emerged, which now makes up the core of the brand, they say. And the three championships were now almost a century ago.
Either way: So far, every attempt to initiate a re-appointment has failed due to a passage in the statutes that granted the Vestenbergsgreuth representative as a legal entity a blocking minority of 20 percent at general meetings. However, since a 90 percent approval was required for a name change, it would have been sufficient if this one person had raised their hand to veto. This is exactly what is no longer possible, since at the end of June a nineteenth majority of the members decided that in future a three-quarters majority would be enough to decide on the re-appointment.
“The vast majority is certainly for the game association. But is it three quarters?”
It is rather unlikely that a corresponding application will be received at the next regular general meeting, which will take place next autumn. However, it is almost certain that this will happen a year later. It is more daring to predict whether at least 75 percent of the members will vote for the club to be renamed “Spielvereinigung Fürth”. In the ultra scene, the mood is clear, and 37 of the 48 fan clubs want to do without the “G word” in the future. “The majority of the Fürth fan scene identifies with its cloverleaf, its game association, which embodies the flagship of our unique cloverleaf city,” says the call from the “Back to the game association” initiative, which also emphasizes how grateful Hack and Vestenbergsgreuth are. “This should never be forgotten and the club should continue to be run in the spirit of its solid, down-to-earth economy.”
But there are also voices in the fan scene, like Werner Dippold, who associate the Greuther addition with the comparatively very successful last 25 years and therefore do not want to do without it. “Two hearts are really beating in my chest,” says the Fürth fan. “I grew up with SpVgg, but I also know that without Greuther we would no longer exist.” Dippold finds it difficult to predict how a vote would turn out if it were requested for 2023: “The vast majority is safe for the game association. But is it three quarters?” In any case, he himself would not advocate a re-naming.
A question of perception of a completely different kind is on the agenda on Saturday (1 p.m.) when the 269th Frankenderby takes place in Nuremberg. Nationwide, the excitement should be limited here, but in Nuremberg, Fürth and the fan communities in the neighborhood it looks very different – especially in the respective ultra scenes. On Saturday there will be a strict fan separation.
